Is map painting a core identity of Europa Universalis?

[Jarvin]

Using "map painting" as a criticism of the game is a reductionist fallacy in disguise.

In the end every game comes down to manipulating some numbers in computer memory. By itself that is not fun (to most people, not judging). It's the combination of rules, limitations, mechanics and flavor that make it enjoyable to spend hours in front of your screen manipulating those numbers, painting that map.

Map painting in Paint can be a fun hobby (hello /r/imaginarymaps), but is pretty trivial as a game. But map painting could very well be the core identity of a deep geopolitical simulation. It just means that territorial expansion is the main goal, not how hard or complicated it is to achieve or maintain that.

I'm not sure about that.
The veiled criticism in 'map painting' doesn't just refer to the game being about conquest, but about said conquest being overly trivial and easy.
A deep geopolitical simulation likely wouldn't ever be a 'map painting' game because the ease of conquering things is likely a sign of poor balance/systems design, which negates the 'depth' of it.

Yupp. A great thing about EU always was that you (or your friend, in the rare case you have one) could stare at the screen and say "wow that's a big France/Russia/Byz/Ulm/whatever" - there's instant visual feedback there. Getting to that point of superior blobhood is fun (well, subjectively speaking) and it truly feels like an achievement. Saying "just a map painter" because of that strong point is incredibly simplistic and dismissive.

In practice it's thus a phrase can be safely disregarded because at best it veils more accurate criticisms. If someone says EU sucks because it's a map painter then you should ask them describe their thoughts in more detail.

On the flipside: the impact of the visual feedback from, say, achieving a world conquest in EU4 has gone significantly down over past years as the difficulty of achieving it has decreased. EU4's problem has never been that being super expansive was possible, but that it was far too easy(or that its main difficulty came down to dealing with the tedium of fighting already won wars, rather than trying to overcome a difficult macro challenge).


The problem with EU4 isn't that you can conquer a lot of things, it's that its far too easy to do that and, more importantly, that there isn't all that much to this game beside just conquering stuff.

 

[Leo0502]

It's not a map painter.
EU4 is a survival horror where you try to not get eaten by a giant monster named after some weird American chicken.

 

[hayseed]

If all you get from playing EU4 is an opportunity to map paint then you have a vary narrow experience of the game. As one example, the trade mechanics are complex and engrossing. I have played as Venice, Papal States, Portugal, Kilwa and Japan, always focused on building a trade game with limited resources. Never map painted, very satisfied with solving other problems. Nothing wrong with map painting, but to say that EU4 is nothing other than a map painter, is like going to Paris, eating nothing but McDonalds and complaining that French food is boring.

 

[Word_Smith]

EU4 is a survival horror

God, I wish

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The veiled criticism in 'map painting' doesn't just refer to the game being about conquest, but about said conquest being overly trivial and easy.

There are maybe 5-10 players that I can think of where if they said it, I would take it seriously.

Hearing it come from players who haven't done one tags or fast WC comes off as dishonest. An excuse made by those that don't want to push the game to its limits in SP, nor take the game to other players in MP. It's fine to not prefer a certain way of playing, but when most people claim WC is "trivial" they are making excuses/deceiving themselves. Performance data doesn't back it.

 

[Junuxx]

There are maybe 5-10 players that I can think of where if they said it, I would take it seriously.

Hearing it come from players who haven't done one tags or fast WC comes off as dishonest. An excuse made by those that don't want to push the game to its limits in SP, nor take the game to other players in MP. It's fine to not prefer a certain way of playing, but when most people claim WC is "trivial" they are making excuses/deceiving themselves. Performance data doesn't back it.

Kind of a red herring, "conquest is too easy" is a very different claim from "world conquest is too easy".

In the former case, people typically mean in comparison with historical empires or in-game AI rivals. And I really don't think that "Growing ahistorically large is too easy" is an outlandish claim for a typical experienced player.

 

[LWE]

With the exception of very weak uncivs like Sikkim (where you'd need phenomenal luck), world conquest is possible in VicII, too. It's just that it has more well-developed peaceful goals than EU4, although even Vicky gets boring without at least a couple of wars per game.

 

[Josar]

It kind of of fits the time Period, where the largest empires ever existed. The states were centralized enough to prevent the revolt spam you see in the crusader kings games, but did not have the diplomatic, and growing humanitarian limits of the Victoria games. Thus almost everything is about expansion of some sort.

 

[Zaddy]

I'm not sure about that.
The veiled criticism in 'map painting' doesn't just refer to the game being about conquest, but about said conquest being overly trivial and easy.
A deep geopolitical simulation likely wouldn't ever be a 'map painting' game because the ease of conquering things is likely a sign of poor balance/systems design, which negates the 'depth' of it.

On the flipside: the impact of the visual feedback from, say, achieving a world conquest in EU4 has gone significantly down over past years as the difficulty of achieving it has decreased. EU4's problem has never been that being super expansive was possible, but that it was far too easy(or that its main difficulty came down to dealing with the tedium of fighting already won wars, rather than trying to overcome a difficult macro challenge).


The problem with EU4 isn't that you can conquest a lot of things, it's that its far too easy to do that and, more importantly, that there isn't all that much to this game beside just conquering stuff.

I feel like the main issue here is that you feel the game should strive to be a, as you say "deep geopolitical simulation" when basically every single mechanic in the game created from release to the present points to that not being the goal.

Unless I'm misunderstanding your post, you have to realize that the game is just not meant to do what you want it to do. As an example, you could certainly complain that Minecraft or something has very shallow survival mechanics, but that would be rather missing the point of Minecraft, yes?

If your complaint is that the game is too easy, I still don't feel that tracks. From game data from the devs, a ton of players basically stick to European majors, Brandenburg and Ottomans. If players were hunting for a challenge, they literally have hundreds of options for weaker tags, or change the difficulty to Very Hard. Most players probably find an adequate challenge already with large nations.

With all respect to the players, look who often someone forming the Roman Empire as like, France gets a thousand upvotes on Reddit. If you really have a very strong grasp on the game and thousands of hours like many people here have, that's just not that impressive. But for the average player, even just forming Rome is a super late game stretch goal... I know this last paragraph makes me sound like a condescending asshole, apologies for that.

 

[Josar]

A core identity gained by the fact that war and conquest is the most involving gameplay loop the game has to offer. Trade is pretty much automatic, diplomacy outside of a couple cases is fire and forget be it with other countries or your estates, religion and rebels is one Humanist idea away of being a problem almost universally, technology is linear... the only other part requiring semi constant decision making is random events. So map painting is what people remember the most because it is simply the one thing you have to think about the most during your campaign

I actually think the diplomacy Is far more developed in Europa 4 than most paradox games, especially now that the favor system has more options. Royal Marriage, and personal Unions are a great way to grow more powerful. Aggressive Expansion is another aspect of diplomacy the player really does have to think about.

 

[Chazb5046]

I actually think the diplomacy Is far more developed in Europa 4 than most paradox games, especially now that the favor system has more options. Royal Marriage, and personal Unions are a great way to grow more powerful. Aggressive Expansion is another aspect of diplomacy the player really does have to think about.

But again it does feel like the end goal or result, is just expansion expansion expansion. PU’s could be such an interesting deep rich experience but instead, it’s just a vassal that take 50 years to annex and don’t let its relations drop..

 

[Chazb5046]

I feel like the main issue here is that you feel the game should strive to be a, as you say "deep geopolitical simulation" when basically every single mechanic in the game created from release to the present points to that not being the goal.

Unless I'm misunderstanding your post, you have to realize that the game is just not meant to do what you want it to do. As an example, you could certainly complain that Minecraft or something has very shallow survival mechanics, but that would be rather missing the point of Minecraft, yes?

If your complaint is that the game is too easy, I still don't feel that tracks. From game data from the devs, a ton of players basically stick to European majors, Brandenburg and Ottomans. If players were hunting for a challenge, they literally have hundreds of options for weaker tags, or change the difficulty to Very Hard. Most players probably find an adequate challenge already with large nations.

With all respect to the players, look who often someone forming the Roman Empire as like, France gets a thousand upvotes on Reddit. If you really have a very strong grasp on the game and thousands of hours like many people here have, that's just not that impressive. But for the average player, even just forming Rome is a super late game stretch goal... I know this last paragraph makes me sound like a condescending asshole, apologies for that.

RE the major tags vs minor, I think you may have missed the point (maybe not). But. It seems to me that, just making the game harder to expand for the sake of it. Isn’t what is desirable by some, or it isn’t the opposite of the anti map painting crowd. But rather that expansion itself (regardless of how hard) is not in itself the end goal or the ‘only real’ thing to do. (MeinTeam I know it’s all abstractions bro) That is to say, developing other aspects of the game, adding more depth and potential pitfalls so that expansion isn’t the only meaningful thing to do.

And further either way, I dont think it’s that expansion should be just harder but that it should sometimes be untenable, have you ever not been able to hold onto conquered land, seriously? I know coalitions can take it back sometimes and HRE demand etc but still, really? Ever? Does it not feel silly conquering all of Europe for example? Or not doing it but, knowing that you can? And that the only, single thing stopping you, is whether you can be bothered to micro it and do it or not. I always try to ignore that feeling but it is there. Not matter how tall you play, no matter how many self imposed handicaps, it’s all a facade. I dunno. I suppose it’s just a game. (My favorite)

 

[Zaddy]

RE the major tags vs minor, I think you may have missed the point (maybe not). But. It seems to me that, just making the game harder to expand for the sake of it. Isn’t what is desirable by some, or it isn’t the opposite of the anti map painting crowd. But rather that expansion itself (regardless of how hard) is not in itself the end goal or the ‘only real’ thing to do. (MeinTeam I know it’s all abstractions bro) That is to say, developing other aspects of the game, adding more depth and potential pitfalls so that expansion isn’t the only meaningful thing to do.

And further either way, I dont think it’s that expansion should be just harder but that it should sometimes be untenable, have you ever not been able to hold onto conquered land, seriously? I know coalitions can take it back sometimes and HRE demand etc but still, really? Ever? Does it not feel silly conquering all of Europe for example? Or not doing it but, knowing that you can? And that the only, single thing stopping you, is whether you can be bothered to micro it and do it or not. I always try to ignore that feeling but it is there. Not matter how tall you play, no matter how many self imposed handicaps, it’s all a facade. I dunno. I suppose it’s just a game. (My favorite)

It doesn't bother me at all that I can conquer all of Europe, that's the entire point of the game. I'm playing a game for fun, not to validate that the game accurately represents the logistics of conquest and administration of a continent spanning empire.

I understand that people want more stuff to do than map paint. What I'm saying is that basically that's all the game is designed to do, and 8 years later and a dozen DLCs deep they're not suddenly going to change that.

We're trying to turn Minecraft into a hardcore survival sim here, but it was always meant to just be a construction sandbox. That's the problem. Not saying they couldn't change course and do something really different in EU5.

 

[Jia Xu]

I wouldnt say so.

AHEM

HoI4, Vicky2, EU4 are all map-painters!

 

[Word_Smith]

AHEM

Something being X doesn't necessarily mean that X is part of its core identity.

 

[Kryndude]

AHEM

To be fair, that's from 2018. Maybe he had a change of mind and we'll get interesting internal mechanics in eu5? Vic3 does seem to aim for that too, I'm looking forward to playing it.

 

[Froonk]

EU4 is indeed map painter, because that's the most efficient thing to do every time. You have to go out of your way to not do it. This is in contrast to Victoria 2 for example, where war is a strategic decision and a bad one even if won will set you back immensely.

 

[The Norman Yoke]

My experience of playing PRU-NGF-GER is not consistent with your description of the game.

Waggle your willy I don't care

A core identity gained by the fact that war and conquest is the most involving gameplay loop the game has to offer. Trade is pretty much automatic, diplomacy outside of a couple cases is fire and forget be it with other countries or your estates, religion and rebels is one Humanist idea away of being a problem almost universally, technology is linear... the only other part requiring semi constant decision making is random events. So map painting is what people remember the most because it is simply the one thing you have to think about the most during your campaign

Agreed but eu4 does have some of the most in depth diplomacy of any paradox game

 

[Jarvin]

I feel like the main issue here is that you feel the game should strive to be a, as you say "deep geopolitical simulation" when basically every single mechanic in the game created from release to the present points to that not being the goal.

I'm not sure about that.
Most additions to the game over past 10+ patches point to the devs attempting to improve the 'depth' of the game and shift its focus towards the 'tall' play. Some examples include:

1. Prosperity - penalizes the player for going to war
2. Professionalism & drilling - penalizes the player for going to war
3. Innovativeness - rewards not doing anything for 100 years so you can spend your mana on getting more innovativeness
4. Obviously, old changes like conversion cost rework, corruption from being above states limit etc.

Granted that the way they went about it was obviously very bad, but the intent of wanting players to spend less time at war is clear.

All I want from EU4 really is to replace the horribly implemented mechanics designed to hinder player's expansion with something that accomplishes the same more organically, ie. in a fun way. You should absolutely be able to be very expansive in your runs and even able to do WCs, but I wish the road to get there was filled with more interesting things to do. That's all

EU4 is indeed map painter, because that's the most efficient thing to do every time. You have to go out of your way to not do it. This is in contrast to Victoria 2 for example, where war is a strategic decision and a bad one even if won will set you back immensely.

Questionable. If by 'efficient' you assume 'what yields you the highest strength', I have no doubts that a 300-400 province big MP country will always beat your typical WC country with 4000 provinces.

There are maybe 5-10 players that I can think of where if they said it, I would take it seriously.

Hearing it come from players who haven't done one tags or fast WC comes off as dishonest. An excuse made by those that don't want to push the game to its limits in SP, nor take the game to other players in MP. It's fine to not prefer a certain way of playing, but when most people claim WC is "trivial" they are making excuses/deceiving themselves. Performance data doesn't back it.

I consider WCs to be completely irrelevant to the discussion here. I'm very happy that WCs are possible and that there's a bunch of people who enjoy doing them, but it should be pretty clear that they go heavily outside of the game's design space. Additionally they are just irrelevant to the point I'm trying to make. It doesn't matter that WCs is something that only, say, top 2% of players do, if we're at a point where, say, top 30% is capable of easily starting as any country in the game and attaining a superpower status, where their further expansion is limited by their own goals rather than the game's difficulty.


I'm always happy to hear others' perspectives on this, but in my view there's just nothing that this game would lose if the early game expansion became slightly more challenging, and late game expansion got heavily more challenging(so that it's no longer just lengthy cleaning up, and instead you still have to face some challenging mechanics actually designed to match a country of your size)


Also tryhard MP might just be the most braindead, requiring the least thinking, way to play this game.

 

[Me_]

EU4 is a map painter. It has always been a map painter and will always be.

Claiming that describing EU4 as a map painter is dismissive is nothing more than projecting one’s insecurities and feeling of inferiority. There’s nothing wrong with EU4 being a map painter. It is what it is and will always be.

One can claim that “NO, it is a deep artistic analysis of the human psyche via the medium of ligts and sounds”.
Such claims are meaningless.

It is like saying that Mona Lisa isn’t a painting because one feels somehow bad about the word “painting”.

EU4 is a map painter. Every and all of its mechanic are geared towards map painting.

Sure, one may refrain from map painting in EU4. One can refrain from shooting in some modern shooters. In my youth I myself have played multiple games like Call of Duty with the express limitation of never using a gun (unless a scripted sequence demanded it), relying only on melee weapons and in one case not ever killing anyone, relying only on AI allies doing their part. That does not mean that Call of Duty is not a shooter.

There is a lot of hidden self-hatred in the way people attack the notion that EU4 is a map painter. They feel like it makes the game lesser in some way. Lesser than what I ask? Their own perception of what EU4 could be but is not.

EU4 is a map painter. All core mechanics are centered around map painting. If any critique of this fact were to be made, it would be that it’s not a very good map painter. It focuses on giving the player tons of tools to paint the map with the colour of their nation/religion/culture, but very little tools to paint the map with the aspects of other nations; i.e. it is easy to change one’s own border, but difficult to repaint borders between two third parties.

EU4 is a map painter. It has combat, but it is simplistic. It is not a war game. The war is the primary means of map painting.

EU4 is a map painter. It has internal mechanics, but they are not engaging or complex enough to be seen as primary mechanics. They serve the map painting.

EU4 is a map painter. It has quite intricate diplomacy system. That serves the map painting.

EU4 is a map painter. It was, it will be. It should not be ashamed of what it is.